Went to Lake Louise yesterday, 3/11/16. Day was sunny super sunny and warm! I just skied with a light merino wool top and my jacket. SO beautiful. Overall, conditions were good. 5 cms fresh.
We spent most of the morning of the frontside. I had a 'fresh tracks' lesson at 8.30 in the morning. Lake Louise has an offer - 1.5 hour private lessons for $100 CAD starting 30 minutes before the lifts starts. It was the first lesson I had in a while and wanted to work on turns, general technique and bumps. It was great - my instructor was really good at giving feedback, we worked on turn shape on the lower mountain blues and blacks, and creating control from the beginning of turn through the end. We then went to the top of the world and went over to the playground side to work on bumps and other terrain. I did my first full bump run
in the Tickety Chutes, and it was hard! but I felt great because i made it down without killing myself, and even felt good at the end! We then did some work in the trees and did some fun turns in this 'natural half pipe' in Jerry's Jungle.
Conditions on front side were ok. Corduroy on the main runs in the morning, a little hard. The 5 cms fresh got scraped off pretty quickly, but the snow was really soft and untracked heading into Tickety Chutes. Pretty nice. The bumps were another story, soft on top but
really icy in between. I had some trouble on the ice when I was coming out of the turns.
After the lesson, I met up with Mr.AlbertanSkiGirl, and we did a few runs on top o' again, including Tickety Chutes and Tight Turns - so many bump runs in one day! This time I had one fall though because of the ice. but it wasn't a bad fall.
After that, we headed to the backside, and what fun back there yesterday! The 5 cms of fresh was more like 15-20 in spots. It didn't really cover up any of the bumps in parts of Paradise and Saddleback, but both Saddleback Bowl and Boomerang Bowl had areas of 15-20 cm deep where the snow had been fallen, but also swept into by the wind!!! FRESHIES!!!!
It was awesome, we just kept doing laps off paradise and summit platter. AWESOME!!!! Upper Boomerang and Brown Shirt were soft and had few people going down, so lots of freshies, as well as the Pipestone area.
The end of the day was not so great - the power went out in Lake Louise and of course, at the resort too. We had about 4 or 5 people ahead of us and were about to get on the Ptarmigan lift when everything stopped. It was about 3pm. Ski patrol and lifties had those of us who were not on lifts use the ski out to get back to the bottom. It sucked. 100s of people on this narrow ski out, with many flats. I remembered why I hate skate skiing. And the poor snowboarders! We got the bottom about 30-45 minutes later, and the lifts were still not moving. People were stuck on the lifts for about 45-60 minutes before the power returned. All disembarked safe and sound. We headed down and had a beer
Things are running normally today again.
Here are the photos!
Here I am after disembarking at Top O' getting ready to go to Tickety Chutes for the 2nd time:
Mr.AlbertanSkiGirl having fun in Jerry's Jungle:
The views never get old:
The top of Saddleback bowl from Top of the World Lift:
Looking up in Saddleback:
Yup, those are my Kenjas in the backside freshies!!!
Loving the windswept freshies. Mr.AlbertanSkiGirl is in the far left of the photos, about to go hit some trees.
A great day at Louise, and the backside never disappoints!
